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Sperm Count Zero

A strange thing has happened to men over the past few decades: We’ve become increasingly infertile, so much so that within a generation we may lose the ability to reproduce entirely. What’s causing this mysterious drop in sperm counts—and is there any way to reverse it before it’s too late?

Men are doomed. Everybody knows this. We're obviously all doomed, the women too, everybody in general, just a waiting game until one or another of the stupid things our stupid species is up to finally gets us. But as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We're going to take the women down with us.

There has always been evidence that men, throughout life, are at higher risk of early death—from the beginning, a higher male incidence of Death by Mastodon Stomping, a higher incidence of Spiked Club to the Brainpan, a statistically significant disparity between how many men and how many women die of Accidentally Shooting Themselves in the Face or Getting Really Fat and Having a Heart Attack. The male of the species dies younger than the female—about five years on average. Divide a population into groups by birth year, and by the time each cohort reaches 85, there are two women left for every man alive. In fact, the male wins every age class: Baby boys die more often than baby girls; little boys die more often than little girls; teenage boys; young men; middle-aged men. Death champions across the board.

Now it seems that early death isn't enough for us—we're on track instead to void the species entirely. Last summer a group of researchers from Hebrew University and Mount Sinai medical school published a study showing that sperm counts in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have fallen by more than 50 percent over the past four decades. (They judged data from the rest of the world to be insufficient to draw conclusions from, but there are studies suggesting that the trend could be worldwide.) That is to say: We are producing half the sperm our grandfathers did. We are half as fertile.

The Hebrew University/Mount Sinai paper was a meta-analysis by a team of epidemiologists, clinicians, and researchers that culled data from 185 studies, which examined semen from almost 43,000 men. It showed that the human race is apparently on a trend line toward becoming unable to reproduce itself. Sperm counts went from 99 million sperm per milliliter of semen in 1973 to 47 million per milliliter in 2011, and the decline has been accelerating. Would 40 more years—or fewer—bring us all the way to zero?

I called Shanna H. Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai and one of the lead authors of the study, to ask if there was any good news hiding behind those brutal numbers. Were we really at risk of extinction? She failed to comfort me. “The What Does It Mean question means extrapolating beyond your data,” Swan said, “which is always a tricky thing. But you can ask, ‘What does it take? When is a species in danger? When is a species threatened?’ And we are definitely on that path.” That path, in its darkest reaches, leads to no more naturally conceived babies and potentially to no babies at all—and the final generation of Homo sapiens will roam the earth knowing they will be the last of their kind.

Divine intervention to either control human reproduction levels, or eliminate it all together; thus leading to the end of the world of men.

Chemical contamination of food and water, due to negligence.

Chemical contamination of the air, food, and water could be intentionally orchestrated by the power elite to control population growth.

A genetic factor could also be involved. With all the gender confusion occurring within our warped society, this could very well contribute to a decrease in spermatozoa levels.

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.” Robert A. Heinlein

There are numerous causes but one of the big ones is that phthalates (plasticizers found in nearly all plastics used for food storage) damage Leydig cells - aka the cells that produce testosterone. So getting rid of plastic food packaging and other sources of phthalate exposure should be priority #1.

BTW - endocrine disruptors have a negative impact on women too and make up is loaded with endocrine disrupting chemicals such as parabens & phthalates. If you have a wife / girlfriend / daughter then I'd recommend trying to get her to switch over to organic make up products.

Almost all the scientists I talked to stressed that not only were low sperm counts alarming for what they said about the reproductive future of the species—they were also a warning of a much larger set of health problems facing men. In this view, sperm production is a canary in the coal mine of male bodies: We know, for instance, that men with poor semen quality have a higher mortality rate and are more likely to have diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease than fertile men.

Those two are related to each other, so they must be considered together (sperm counts and health).

Let's see!

First, the causes:

Originally Posted by Gareth Lee Hunter

Possible causes:
Chemical contamination of food and water, due to negligence.
Chemical contamination of the air, food, and water could be intentionally orchestrated by the power elite to control population growth.

I agree with those two, especially with the second one. The second one could not be possible without some negligence too.

Other causes, as stated in the article, chemicals and additives everywhere, obviously! And especially the endocrine disruptive chemicals. There are more studies about those, and some chemicals of this kind were found to cause homosexuality in men, too!

Living unhealthy and far away from the natural ways of living... this is the price humanity pays for that! The pollution to this planet has its price... the planet will simply get rid of us, if we don't treat her properly. Simple, isn't it?

Now, let's find solutions!

First of all, I would say, going back to a natural way of living. If everyone else is still going like they do nowadays, we can create our communities with a better lifestyle, close to Nature. I think there are still some isolated communities on this planet who live in communion with Nature and who don't deal with this problem. Or at least not at this scale. So, the solution is also simple like that, but difficult to implement on a great scale.

Considering the cause I emphasized in Gareth's answer, the solution would be to get rid of those first! Otherwise any effort at a larger scale might be in vain.

But on personal levels, what each of us can do is just living a healthier and a more natural lifestyle, getting rid of all unnatural things, as much as possible! Both if you want to have healthy children, or if you just want to live healthy and happy!

Originally Posted by J.Yaxley

BTW - endocrine disruptors have a negative impact on women too and make up is loaded with endocrine disrupting chemicals such as parabens & phthalates. If you have a wife / girlfriend / daughter then I'd recommend trying to get her to switch over to organic make up products.

Good advice! All natural and organic make up, or no make up at all! Unfortunately women use lots of unhealthy things that also affect their fertility. Including birth control pills: artificial hormones cannot do any good in someone's body. Abstinence is better, if you don't want to mess up your endocrine system! I've heard of many women who messed up their fertility with the birth control pills and they had to make extra efforts to get pregnant after taking pills!

So, the unnatural way of living affects everyone!

And yes, homosexuality in men, and men becoming more feminine, while women becoming more masculine, they all also have the same causes, the endocrine disruptive chemicals and artificial estrogens found just everyone around us nowadays, as the problem with male sperm. All of these are interrelated. Someone had planned all of these, for the extinction of the western civilization, and look at how it looks today: homosexuality being promoted everywhere, gender roles being messed up, and of course the desire and the capacity of having children decreases considerably too!

Now what can be done... depends on each individual to take care of his own life and inform others as well. I personally don't see other solution to this than just going back to nature and living according to natural principles and ways.

Young men wearing tight underpants. I have always worn extra large Y-Fronts with plenty of breathing space. It is well known that tight underwear and tight trousers reduces male fertility. Put it down to a ridiculous fashion trend!

My first guess is probably the mass proliferation of endocrine disruptors, hormonal birth control (I suspect some really nasty epigenetic problems with this) and our inability to filter it out of the water supply, and the sedentary lifestyle, modern diet, and the stress of civilization collapse/autocide.